


"Talk to you later."

by TheMousePrince



Series: A Collection of Season 4 Fix-Its [1]
Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Implied Suicide Attempt, M/M, Nonbinary Mikael
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 12:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11623326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMousePrince/pseuds/TheMousePrince
Summary: The talk between Even and Sana we should have had.Set between them meeting in front of Sana’s locker in episode 3 and Yousef telling Sana about what happened between Mikael and Even at the end of episode 4.





	"Talk to you later."

 

Instead of being welcomed by Even when she walks into KaffeBrenneriet in  Skovveien, Sana is greeted by a few lingering looks from white customers. She locks eyes with the one closest to her and is relieved when the middle-aged man immediately fakes interest in the geometrical shapes etched in the foam of his latte.   
Sana has no problem staring down bigoted strangers. But occasionally one of them stares back, unashamed, and that’s when she  _ worries _ .

 

A few minutes later, Sana is seated at the long window of the coffee shop, watching the passersby as her chai tea gently burns her hands.

“Hey!” Even says, sitting next to her.

His knees bump into the floor-to-ceiling window, reminding him to turn to the side (the world is not built for giants).

“I had to change. Did you wait long?”

Sana shakes her head and smiles.

 

They both stare out the window for a bit, so Sana busies herself with inventing lives for as many passersby as she can.

The man lighting a new cigarette with the ember of the one he just finished is a stay-at-home dad with seven children. The woman dragging a huge suitcase behind her, sweat absorbed by her expertly applied makeup, is on her way to meet her long distance girlfriend for the first time. The man with red hair carrying his cat in one of these astronaut cat-packs is an American exchange student and YouTuber. 

And the man sitting next to her, combing his hair back nervously, is a barista with too many secrets.

 

“So,” Even’s voice comes out slightly shaky, “how are things with the boys?”

“Same than last time we talked.” Sana notices how Even’s jaw sets. She worries she’s shut him down. “Except Elias is not just lounging around, now. He started a YouTube channel!”

Even looks both surprised and not. But his face lights up for the first time today and that’s all that matters.

“How is that going on for him?”

“Hell if I know!” Sana says, making Even chuckle.

“You’re not even a little bit curious?”

“I am. Extremely. But my fear of what’s on his channel overpowers my nosiness by a landslide.”

They laugh sincerely, and it feels good. It’s the lightest Sana has felt since her parents almost found out she’d let booze inside their flat (and since Noora told her, way too casually, that she didn’t have heartbreaks just because she’s Muslim).

“And how have  _ you _ been?” Even asks, smiling gently.

“Oh, you know,” Sana’s throat turns into an intricate knot of pain and anxiety, “fine!”

Even understands through Sana’s voice hitching at the start of “fine” and her tense smile that she is anything but O.K.

But he doesn’t prode, or push. They’ve been friends for a few years now. Sana knows he is here if she needs him. And he knows how some battles are sometimes better fought alone. And, most of all,

he knows it’s not his place to decide what’s best for her.

So he simply nods.

“Did you pay for that coffee? If you’d waited for me I could have gotten it for you free of charge,” he says.

“Don’t worry about it. I stole it.”

“How do you even steal coffee from a coffee shop?”

Sana locks eyes with Even.

“You have to climb over the counter.”

 

Once Sana and Even have caught their breaths and wiped the tears of laughter from their eyes, Even finally takes the plunge.

“I wanted to talk because—” He grabs a straw that was forgotten on the counter and twists it a couple of times. Hard. “—well, because Isak has been asking a lot of questions about Mikael.”

“Like I said, I haven’t told him anything.”

“I know that,” Even snaps before twisting the straw harder, “sorry. I’ve been under a lot of stress and —not that it’s an excuse— well...point is I have to tell him.”

Even looks away from Sana and through the window. The ghost of a smile lingers on his lips and he extends his hand, rubbing some invisible mark on the glass with his thumb.

“I love him, and I don’t want to hide things from him anymore. Not if he asks. I want, no,” he frowns, “I  _ need  _ to be real with him.”

His hand comes back to the straw, untwisting it and trying to smooth it back to its original shape.

“That’s good, Even.” Sana hesitates before covering his hand with her own and squeezing gently. “That’s brave.”

 

Even had missed hanging out with Sana. He’d avoided her for so long because of Isak. Because Even felt that the bipolar had already been a lot for him to adjust to. Because Even was scared of losing this moment of peace and stability he’d found thanks to his boyfriend.

A boyfriend he still couldn’t believe he had.

Even had been feeling like he was standing in the middle of a high wire and the slightest movement could send him crashing into the ground.

But playing the tightrope artist was tiring and his legs were threatening to give up at any moments.

Even needed to know once and for all if he could reach the other side.

 

“Can I ask you something?”

Even wonders how long he spent lost in his thoughts. “Sure.”

Sana gives one last squeeze to Even’s hand before moving her hand back to her warm drink.

“Even if I’d wanted to tell Isak anything, I wouldn’t have been able to,” Sana says, “because I never actually learned what happened between you and the squad.”

Sana pauses to take in Even’s reaction. He seems surprised. She thought he knew. Until he approached her at her locker, asking about Isak and Mikael, she thought he knew Sana had been clueless and that he just didn’t want to tell her what had happened.

 

One day, Even was hanging out with Elias and his friends, as usual. (They’d always laugh so hard that she — on more than one occasion— had had to play bad cop and walk inside Elias’ room, uninvited, to command him to keep it quiet so she could study.)

The next day, Even was gone and Elias was looking grim. He barely ate for a week and that really worried the whole family (nothing could usually affect Elias’ insatiable appetite; not exams, not bullying, not his favourite TV show being cancelled).

The boys didn’t hang out at home for a while either.

One day, a friend of Sana from Bakka told her that this James Dean wannabe freaked everyone out by posting a bunch of weirdly specific verses from the Quran on Facebook before leaving school. There were even rumours he tried to kill himself. Crazy, right?

And then Even transferred to Nissen and Sana wanted to ask what happened, and if he was O.K., and was he talking to the boys again, and did he want to come by to her house and have a couple of her mother’s kaab el ghzal?

But instead, Even and Sana would just nod at each other when they saw one another. Sometimes they’d even exchange a smile or a few mundane words. “Looking forward to gym?” “What’s up with that weather?”

Until finally, came Isak. He unknowingly brought them closer together again. Although, ironically, they had to hide they knew each other at all because of him.

(Sana never told Even she caught Isak watching a video of him and Mikael from the Bakka years. It was not her place to tell. Also, she didn’t want Isak to seem creepy. She knew Even had a crush on him and that Isak was (somewhere, deep down) a good guy, so she didn’t want to break the news to Even that his eye-candy was a stalker who was extremely bad at lying.)

 

Even opens and closes his mouth a few times.

“Fuck, Sana…”

“You don’t owe me an answer.”

Even frowns.

“I’m just happy we’re talking again. Really.” Sana smiles. “I just felt I should tell you I never learned what happened because the boys never told me and I never asked. I wondered, sure, but I didn’t want to pull the truth out from anyone. I wanted you to tell me. You or Elias. I wasn’t interested in rumours or hearsays.”

She looks out through the window.

As if on cue, the nearest passerby trips on an uneven part of the sidewalk and drops the black plastic bag they were carrying; a pair of fur-lined handcuffs and a box advertising some “ANGEL’S TONGUE” in neon letters tumble out. The now red-faced passerby drops to the ground and tries their best to stuff the items back in their bag as fast as possible.

Sana takes a sip of her tea.

Even missed the action, hyperfocused as he was on what his next words should be.

“I know I don’t owe you an answer, Sana. But I want to give you one.”

Sana nods at Even and puts her tea down.

“You know I’ve loved the boys from the moment we met at Bakka. It all started when Mikael and I got paired up for a media project and, after our first brainstorming session, they invited me to have a kebab with them and their friends. It’s insane how effortless it was...” Even is talking so fast he keeps running out of breath. But he’s afraid that if he stops he’ll never have the guts to finish his story.

Funny how this was a story now. How this thing that happened to him (and was very real and once a part of his present) was now a story he was telling someone. Something he was semi-detached from. Something he had to pull out from his brain and weave into words.

He wished he had at least had time to write a first draft.

“...how easy it was, our friendship. How we all clicked together like a Rubik’s cube finally unjumbling its colours. I loved them. So much,” Even’s throat squeezes hard on that last word, forcing a pause.

For a second, he’s afraid he won’t be able to finish.

But the story yanks the reins from his brain’s figurative hands, and the words come pouring out.

“But I loved Mikael more.”

Sana nods, without judgement, but Even can’t see her. He’s staring blindly at the damaged straw between his fingers.

 

“We were spending more and more time together without the rest of the squad. Long nights spent talking until birds started chirping and the sky was bruised with colours.”

Even closes his eyes and Sana is not sure if it’s to remember more clearly or to try and unsee the memories that are resurfacing.

“And one night, as we were lying down next to each other on my bed, I thought maybe, just maybe...it wasn’t just me. We’d just listened to Feeling Good by Nina Simone and her voice was still buzzing through my body. I could feel some of Mikael’s hair against the side of my neck and everything felt right, connected. Every atom in the universe were where they should be. The whole world was breathing in unison and I  _ knew _ that if I kissed Mikael now, space and time would disappear and this moment would last forever. An infinity of happiness.”

Even feels his stomach clench and his eyes sting and he takes a deep breath in, trying to push the emotions back down his throat.

“The moment I kissed them, everything came crashing against everything else at full speed. They pushed me back and the confusion on their face just...killed me. They said they should go home and that they’d call me tomorrow. They rushed out of my flat at fucking 3 in the morning and left me stunned on my bed while,” Even lets out a pained chuckle, “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood by Nina Simone started playing.”

Even lets go of his straw to press his hands into his face, rubbing the images away.

 

That’s all he can say right now.

He can’t tell Sana that, after that, the pleasant buzzing in his body turned into an angry buzzing around him. That everything became too much and too little and too fast and too slow at the same time; that just the sound of someone breathing in his vicinity could set him into an unmatchable rage; that he didn’t sleep much but not because he didn’t need to (he was so tired he could barely keep his eyes open, but he couldn’t quite close them either; the rare times he fell asleep for a few hours felt like ellipses, and he never woke up from them feeling rested); that he tried to read the Quran because it was the only thing that he thought would make sense in the overwhelming chaos, but that he couldn’t focus long enough to read it entirely so he just read the same passages over and over and over again until he could recite them by heart and then

that’s where his memory got fuzzy.

He was told that he got into trouble for posting “hateful passages of the Quran on Bakka’s Facebook page”. Even can’t remember what the passages said. He remembers being filled with rage and self hatred, yes, but why post anything on Bakka’s page? He couldn’t care less about Bakka. He cared about the boys. He cared about Mikael.

Maybe the words got too much. When you get stuck on words for hours, or even days, you need to find a way to let them go.

Feeding them to the social media Beast might have felt like the most straight-forward decision at the time.

Just like trying to feed himself to the void had. Straight up. No feelings. Finally embracing the true absence of everything that ever had been and ever will be.

 

Even worries he’s been quiet for too long. He finally dares looking over at Sana. Her lips are pursed and pulled to the side in this gentle worried expression.

“I kind of lost it after that.” Even still feels the need to justify himself. “They said it was a mixed episode.”

Sana tilts her head to the side and frowns.

“It’s that bitter bitter mix of mania and depression. You’re filled with energy but feeling super low at the time. So instead of getting focused on fun things like running around filled to the brim with love to share, you focus on the many ways you can self destruct. And oftentimes, on top of it all, you experience the most powerful rage ever,” Even shakes his head, “but I don’t want to go into more details. Not that I could anyway,” he chuckles.

(Now he really looks crazy, laughing about such a dark topic.)

“It’s O.K., Even.” Sana says.

She sips some more of her tea as they sit in a comfortable silence for a bit.

Even feels lighter and heavier at the same time. It’s the first time he got (most of) it out. The first time he properly shared it with someone else.

(Sonja had asked, of course. She’d worried, and rightly so. But, at the time, Even couldn’t remember as much as he could now, and his body and brain still felt numb and disconnected from each other and what had happened —and was happening— to them.)

But saying it out loud, bringing it up to the surface, also brought back some of the dark feelings attached to it.

Regardless, Even has finally stopped carrying the weight of it all on his own. Sana took a bit off of his shoulders just by listening to him, and he is forever grateful.

“Did Mikael…” Sana is looking down at her cup of, now cold, tea. “Did Mikael ever reached out to you after that night? Do you know if they told the rest of the squad?”

Even shakes his head.

“They tried to call me. Well, Elias did. I had a few missed calls. But I couldn’t—” The words catch in Even’s throat. “I couldn’t face them. I don’t know if Mikael ever told them. I don’t know if Elias called because of what happened that night or because of what I wrote on Facebook. I don’t know if Mika—” Even’s voice breaks and his eyes start shining with tears. “—I don’t know if they ever forgave me.”

Sana rummages through the pockets of her orange hoodie and pulls out an old pack of tissues. She pushes it across the counter to Even.

“Do you want me to ask Elias?”

Even ignores the tissues and wipes his eyes with the bottom of his t-shirt.

“I really don’t know,” he says.

“O.K.”

“What I do know, is that I want to tell Isak.”

Sana smiles. “O.K.”

And then she adds, “Good thing you just rehearsed, then.”

Even laughs and, just like that, the rest of the weight is gone.

“I love you, Sana.”

“Ugh,” Sana rolls her eyes, “don’t get sentimental on me now, N æ sheim.”

“I love you, Sana Bakkoush, and I am grateful to have you in my life.”

Even wraps his long arm around Sana’s shoulders and squeezes her lightly against him.

“You’re the strongest person I know,” he adds.

Sana does this thing where she licks the back of her front teeth.

“I know,” she says.

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive criticism is welcome. I made an Even playlist you can listen to [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/khuthulun/playlist/7gvU7csIcGDgdudRGFq0yt) and, as always, you can find me on Tumblr at [monstermonstre](http://monstermonstre.tumblr.com).


End file.
